Indian Civil Nuclear News & Discussions.

Vinod2070 · Aug 3, 2008

More than the nuclear reactors themselves, it is the end of the "Technology Denial" regime around India that is more interesting.

Side-effects of Npowerment

Thought for the day: Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel giant now in the Tata kitty makes high-grade advanced steel that could be used to make rust-free hypodermic syringes, golf club heads and even bicycle tubes. Now that Tata owns Corus, this steel would be available to the Indian manufacturing sector, right? Wrong. Because it can also be used to make centrifuges in uranium enrichment, it's denied to India. So the Tatas may own it, but cannot sell the steel in India.

Quite apart from nuclear energy, the 'nuclear deal' as it is inappropriately but widely known, is a deal for India to access all those technologies that may make nuclear power, but could also be used to make a perfect coffee-pot. Ravinder Pal Singh, who has studied technology denial regimes against India for years at SIPRI in Stockholm, says it's inaccurate to call these technologies "dual-use". "For India's purposes, these are controlled technologies, which mean countries use denial regimes to deny India access to these technologies, whether they are in the civilian or military sectors."

As the nuclear deal heads for its denouement and the country emerges from a bruising debate on its obscure and esoteric merits, for the average Indian the deal is still a mystery. If all this is going to do is increase India's energy generation by 8%, what is the big deal about? That's because it's more than just nuclear energy — after three decades it opens India up to advanced technologies in sectors as diverse as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, automotives, defence and IT. And there lies the real importance of the deal.

Let's do a random check of what opens up for India if the deal clears the NSG hurdle. Currently we can only look at what is called "sunset technologies" — stuff that is no longer competitive. Advanced technologies in any field are denied to Indian manufacturing facilities at the moment.

But with an NSG waiver, technologies that are younger than seven years suddenly become accessible. And the sectors that stand to gain are:

IT and software

These sectors will be the biggest beneficiaries as a relaxation in global technology rules gives India access to much more advanced tech, spelling a quantum leap for the Infosys, TCS and Wipros of the country. Indian companies now have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, before they can jump to the next level. For instance, access to high-performance computing systems — a lot of which are currently denied to India under various export control regimes — will put Indian software and IT R&D in a different league.

HPC systems have contributed to leading-edge developments in such diverse applications as weapons design, integrated-circuit simulation, automobile crash simulation, seismic prospecting, and drug design.

Oil and electronics

This includes technology used in weather analysis and forecasting. As it also has nuclear applications, it has thus far been denied to India. Digital phosphor oscilloscopes, which are indispensable for oil refineries and electronics industry, also have a nuclear role and are currently barred — but will now be available. Filamentary poles, important for making tennis rackets, golf clubs and fishing poles, are also inaccessible because they can be used for uranium enrichment.

Mining and power

Compressors, testing systems, furnaces for power generation, mining equipment, high-voltage power supplies, industrial and scientific equipment like heat exchangers, pipings, fittings, valves, measuring and calibrating equipment... Many of these have applications in different sectors and access to them would give Indian manufacturing a huge boost.

Side-effects of Npowerment-Special Report-Sunday Specials-Opinion-The Times of India

Its just not a nuclear deal and that is why it is so important.

Flintlock · Aug 3, 2008

I hope that India adopts the best safety standards. Nuclear disaster is no joke.

sunny_aus · Aug 4, 2008

Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Indian power plant

MOSCOW, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Russia has delivered three batches of nuclear fuel to the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in India, Itar-Tass reported Monday.

The nuclear fuel has been delivered to the plant "in the form of fuel clusters with uranium content not higher than 4.1 percent," an official of the Russian nuclear monopoly Atomenergoprom was quoted as saying. The official indicated that the fuel could not be used for nuclear weapons.

The first batch of 40 nuclear fuel rods was taken to the plant in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu last week and all of the nuclear fuel will be put into the reactor by the end of this year, Itar-Tass said.

The construction of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant was launched in 2002 under a bilateral agreement between India and the Soviet Union in 1988.

The Russian company Atomstroyexport is building two light-water reactors with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each for the Indian plant. The first is expected to run next January.

Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Indian power plant _world_English_SINA.com

sunny_aus · Aug 4, 2008

Flintlock said:
I hope that India adopts the best safety standards. Nuclear disaster is no joke.

increasing number of terrorist attacks is also a concern. any type of terrorist attack on the nuclear plants will cause a disaster :coffee:

GHATAK · Aug 5, 2008

Flintlock said:
I hope that India adopts the best safety standards. Nuclear disaster is no joke.

India has been running nuclear reacters for over 20 years.
No worries, we are safe.

Energon · Aug 5, 2008

malaymishra123 said:
Practically if nuclear energy has to make a bigger dent in the Indian energy market, the reactors should be around 1000MW ,not the 100-300MW standard like they are now, otherwise it would take a long long time before Nuclear energy becomes the main source of our energy production.

Would it be possible to upgrade the existing ones? There really doesn't seem any point in operating outdated low yield reactors which if I'm not mistaken are kept below their operational levels on account of their age.

If these can't be upgraded, then they might as well install new ones adjacent to them and dismantle/destroy the old ones.

blain2 · Aug 6, 2008

GHATAK said:
India has been running nuclear reacters for over 20 years.
No worries, we are safe.

Without safeguard, you actually have no idea what safe is. With safety issues even at TMI nuclear plant in the US, I somehow doubt that Indian or other nuclear plants outside of safeguards/auditing are so safe.

vish · Aug 6, 2008

blain2 said:
Without safeguard, you actually have no idea what safe is. With safety issues even at TMI nuclear plant in the US, I somehow doubt that Indian or other nuclear plants outside of safeguards/auditing are so safe.

I do agree with you... in the sense that in terms of safety, the more the better... but we have never had any major nuclear accident up until now.

godsavetheworld · Apr 5, 2009

India receives first consignment of nuclear fuel from France news

Hyderabad: The pay-offs from the 123 Agreement with the United States have begun to materialize for the fuel-starved Indian nuclear industry with the first consignment of 60 tonnes of uranium ore concentrate, imported from France, arriving at the Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) here. The ore will be converted into fuel for power reactors.

The supply to India has been made consequent to clearance by the international cartel, the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The ore will now be processed and used to produce power in safeguarded pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs).

Speaking at a press conference here yesterday, RN Jayaraj, chief executive officer, NFC , said that consequent to Indo-US nuclear deal, the 123 agreement and clearance by NSG India and France entered into a bilateral agreement for the supply of nuclear reactors and fuel.

As a first step, the Department of Atomic Energy entered into a contract with French nuclear supplier AREVA for the supply of 300 tonnes of uranium ore concentrate. Sixty tonnes have now been released under the first consignment which has been received by the NFC.

Jayaraj said the fuel would be processed in the designated fuel plants at the NFC by converting uranium ore concentrated into nuclear grade uranium dioxide powder and then compacted in the form of cylindrical pellets.

These pellets will then stacked and encapsulated in thin walled tubes of zirconium alloy which will be sealed by resistance welding using end plugs, a technology which has been innovated in India.

NSG_BlackCats · Apr 10, 2009

Russia delivers first batch of nuclear fuel to India

Moscow, April 10: Under a multi-million dollar long-term nuclear fuel supply deal between Moscow and New Delhi, Russia has delivered the first batch of 30 metric tonnes of uranium pellets to India.

"Thirty metric tonnes of pellets have been delivered to Hyderabad-based Nuclear Fuel Complex for the production of fuel for 'Rajasthan' NPP," Russia's 'Atomenergoprom' said in a statement.

Under the USD 700 million contract inked between Russia's TVEL Corporation and India's Department of Atomic Energy in February, this is the first batch of Uranium Dioxide pellets delivered to Nuclear Fuel Complex.

One of the largest nuclear fuel producers in the world, TVEL is a wholly owned subsidiary of 'Atomenergoprom'. Under the deal, it would supply the uranium pellets to fuel pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) in India.

TVEL would also ensure life-cycle supply of fuel for the light-water VVER reactors of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.

Russia is currently completing the assembly of first two VVER-1000 reactors with total two Megawatt capacity at Kudankulam. Under the deal inked in December 2008 during President Dmitry Medvedev's maiden India visit, Russia will build four more reactors to meet India's growing energy requirements.

LINK

Screaming Skull · Jun 19, 2009

Hi,

I know this is a four year old thread, but I couldn't help but revive it as I found that no Indian members bothered to reply to some of the Pakistani members' queries and eventually the thread went dead.

So, I will first start by detailing India's contribution in this project and eventually try to find and post some latest news regarding the progress of the project.

India’s contributions to ITER

ITER will be built mostly through in-kind contributions by the seven partners, meaning they will build their share of ITER components through an appropriately formed Domestic Agency (DA) and industries and deliver them to ITER for final assembly of the device.

India will be contributing, like other partners except the host EU, about 10% of the ITER construction cost (EU pays about 40% coz the ITER is being built in France and rest of the six members including India contribute 10% each).

Most of this will be in the form of components made by the Indian industry and delivered to ITER.Only a small part (~1%) will be paid in cash to a common fund for in-cash procurements by the ITER International Team.

Following are the ITER components to be delivered by India :

Cryostat and Vacuum vessel pressure suppression system
Vessel ferromagnetic inserts
Cryolines and cryo-distribution system
Heat rejection and water cooling system components
Ion Cyclotron heating and current drive sources, power supplies and control systems
Startup Electron Cyclotron heating source, power supply and control system
Diagnostic Neutral Beam
Some diagnostic systems

Screaming Skull · Jun 20, 2009

WebMaster said:
Is he talking about India?

Yes indeed he is talking about India. If you read the full answer, it says,

As Dr V P Raja, head of the Indian delegation in Jeju, Republic of Korea, said: "Our scientists have already designed and fabricated two tokamak devices [a kind of nuclear reactor, the ITER will also be a tokamak device] Aditya and the steady state superconducting tokamak SST 1. Many technologies of relevance to the forefront of fusion research have been developed by our scientists and engineers in collaboration with our industries. We thus bring to the table a combination of strong commitment from the government and special scientific and technological skills, which are of relevance to ITER and to fusion research."

India has considerable expertise in building TOKAMAKs and plasma research is in an advanced stage in India. I can give you some info on the ADITYA and SST 1 TOKAMAKs, but I think I will save it for another day. For now enjoy some pics of SST 1 and related parts.

SST 1